The Minotaur

“You must pick one,” he commanded.

I cowered before him. He was massive. Broad and thick with densely wrapped muscle enveloping his body. So substantial it was as if he were made of stone, but for the ease of his movement. His features were exaggerated. His nose, round as a saucer. His ears pointed, but folded, with that familiar flop of a canine’s, surreptitiously designed to alert him to the sound of a brittle leaf crackling underneath a distant footstep. His cheeks had that child-like fullness to them, a heaviness that left him with the slightest hint of a droop at his jawline. One might almost mistake him for precocious, bearing such childlike features. But his years were belied by his eyes. His large, cavernous eyes were silky black. Not demonic, they were not void of expression – but so dark it was as if they trapped the memories of 100 midnight skies within them. And the horns. Shorter than I imagined for a Minotaur, but thick and scarred. Honed. He stood 10 feet tall, and when he spoke downward toward me his voice was so heavy and so deep I felt the soft earth beneath my feet tremble from the reverberation of it.

“Once bestowed upon you, you cannot return to your prior form. You will be forever altered. But you would be wise to consider what is before you. With each advantage comes disadvantage. With each skill, an inability.”

The trees that surrounded us were still as statues in his presence. The leaves draped from their branches as if sound asleep for the evening, but for those few that were gently waving above us, wrestling with the rising heat thrown by the fire behind me. Above, the sky held nothing but inky blackness. The night held no stars tonight. The fire glinted off the powerful muscles in his chest and arms, highlighting the depth of shadows between each of their fibers. But the light cast by the fire did little to illuminate the dark woods that surrounded us. And little to quell any fears about what lay in wait just outside the perimeter.

“You have come here. You have foolishly invaded this space, and by unimaginable happenstance have survived thus far.” He said this not quite angrily, but almost with aggravated surprise. “But you will not survive the night, not as you are. You cannot stay here. And you cannot return from where you came, not after what you’ve seen. What you’ve done. So you must pick one. I will grant you this. And then will grant you no more.” The intensity of his words revealed his immeasurable power. His black eyes were locked upon me as he spoke, seconding the seriousness of what he had just laid before me, measuring whether he was mistaken in granting me this pardon, in sparing my fragile flesh and bones from the fatal, crushing blow he could so easily dispense.

“Now.” He commanded. “You must pick one now.”

My mind was darting. Terrified. Confused. The fire’s heat, the cool air, the beast before me, the growing awareness that I had done this, that I had caused myself to come to this place from which I could never return. Never return to the world I knew before. Never return to the life I wasn’t even aware I had made until just now. That I was too naïve to know until this very moment that I could never go back. That I had made my choice, unknowingly, the minute I set off on this path. The fire crackled louder, as if hearing my thoughts, lapping at the brisk air above it. But despite the fire’s growing intensity, the blackness just outside the reach of its light suddenly grew darker. The night sky seemed to lower itself upon us. But still the Minotaur’s reflective eyes never broke their gaze upon me. Waiting.

“I… I don’t know… I thought I was supposed to … but … but then I was drawn here. I wasn’t trying to come here. I just … did.” My words stumbled out of me, my brain unable to let one thought escape my lips before the next thought started. All of me felt like it was shaking.

“This was no accident.” He said with disgust at my lack of awareness, of control, of the actions I had taken to bring me to this point, to this moment where the life I had was no longer mine to choose. “You may not have known what you were coming to, but you made the decision to come here. And now you cannot go back.” It was too much to take in. I couldn’t yet comprehend the choices before me. That one of them wasn’t to just undo this.

“Choose!” He roared. Out of patience. Out of time.

Everything around me grew smaller, tighter, darker. I struggled to keep standing, the terror pulsing through me. “Stealth!” I shouted in return, surprised both by the decision and by the strength of my own voice. “I choose Stealth.” I had no idea what I chose, the meaning of that choice. What would come now. But he said I could not go back. And if I could not go back, if I had to live in this world now, I needed to be able to do it covertly. Clandestinely. Out of sight.

His dark eyes kept their hold on me, the light of the fire behind us glimmering against the black in them. There was almost a sad recognition in his gaze. He dropped to all fours, hooves behind him and his hands spread wide, gripping the earth beneath each finger pad. He then lowered his head, and suddenly, decisively, and without wavering, lurched forward and rammed his massive skull into my chest - blasting me back into the fire.